VA Internal Data: Three out of Five Veterans failed to receive Care within the VA's 14 Day Targeted Period ..

.. Which Means ONLY 40% Did receive care within 14 Days. Those figures are based on the assumption that the numbers weren't fudged to make the VA look better than they actually are:

The Department of Veterans Affairs official internal data show it failed to treat three out of five veterans within its 14-day target period for care, VA statistics obtained by USA TODAY show.

But as bad as those numbers are, greater numbers of patients may have been kept waiting, according to an audit released last week that shows rampant fraud in keeping official appointment records. Some 13% of schedulers at 216 VA health facilities said they were instructed in how to falsify the wait times they reported to VA headquarters. At least one instance of false scheduling occurred at 64% of the facilities, the audit showed.

Those reported numbers, made available through a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that even without the fraud, patients were kept waiting. In the six-month period ending March 31, the VA's 150 hospitals and 820 outpatient clinics failed to treat more than 200,000 veterans who came in for first-time primary care appointments in 14 days.

Do you think IT had to Wait?

On Friday, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned after turning over to President Obama results from the audit that showed widespread falsification of appointment records. Shinseki acknowledged that the tough, 14-day wait time standard may have led scores of schedulers to manipulate records. He ordered that the 14-day standard no longer be linked with performance bonuses and salary increases.

CLICK HERE to open the Interactive Version

According to an interim Inspector General report issued last week, veterans at a Phoenix VA hospital were waiting months even before being tracked in this official record — their names kept on separate, secret lists. Internal VA audit results released Friday show that 13% of staff at 216 VA health facility sites were instructed in how to manipulate wait-time data to hide delays in medical treatment of veterans. At least one instance of this type of instruction was found at 62% of the facilities, the audit says.

"This behavior runs counter to our core values," says the audit.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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